AGC #441 is done, without much delay from sneaking in the one I skipped (#438). And now, I have to go to work because today's probably the busiest day of the month... fun.

Like the subject line says, here's AGC #437; back to the D&D campaign (more or less).

Boing! AGC #430

Finally got caught up on the new season of Big Bang Theory... good stuff. Now we're just trying to figure out when Shark's Tank and Dragon's Den are playing exactly. Shark Tank has already changed schedule at least once in the short time it's been on. And yes, they are the same show, but one is in Canada, the other in the US, and in practice it's just more of a good thing.

It's been a long week, but here'sAGC #425, which if my comics had titles anymore would probably be something like "Love the cloud".

Now, I wouldn't compare what I do for a living to really hard and/or stressful jobs, like police, firemen or construction workers. That said, I have a lot of responsibilities relative to how much I'm paid, and a fair amount of stress and decisionmaking, which is why I usually work a little less than "full" full-time. I also value my time at home over that extra bit of money I would make working 40h. So I can tell you that having worked 8 of the last 9 calendar days, almost half of which being 9+ hour shifts, I am tired. But I got the comic up anyhow, so yay.

D&D online is pretty cool so far. I don't know if it can hold interest as long as something like WoW, but for now I'm enjoying the upgrades, options and gear, and the feeling you get from everyone having different skills that benefit the party. As you advance and face harder challenges, it also has a lot of interesting puzzle-solving (in between the wanton smashing of monstrous humanoids) that is less common in most MMO games. And 3.5 edition Dwarves are still awesome.

That's right, I have so much crap going on now that you wouldn't think I'd have any time to update, but in some kind of perverse twist, I'm ahead of myself enough to be overconfident and put up AGC #422 after only four days (whereas I've been pretty faithful to the six-day schedule for like half a year).

It'll probably be every six days most of the time, especially as things get busier, but I'm just in a good mood today (somehow).

Other good news, dad is giving us a hand with the house-buying process, which is really taking some of the stress off, and that's greatly appreciated. Of course, we're fully capable of inventing our own new and varied forms of stress, but still. I hope to have all the main stuff sorted out in the next couple days. Then other things will become the main things. Yay.

Here's AGC #420... there sure are getting to be a lot of these things. Not that I plan on going very deep into Eberron details, names and places, but I bet if I get anything wrong (or make up anything that doesn't seem to fit) I'll never hear the end of it.

So, I just grabbed an apple, peeled the sticker off, then peeled the other sticker off. Two stickers on my bloody apple. I know there's at least one fruit company out there using lasers to burn inkless, gooless markings on their apples - I've seen it on TV - and they said it's both cheaper and more sanitary, and it saves them from finding stupid fruit-stickers all over every machine in the factory (which is an inevitable consequence of the fruit-stickering process). So WHY am I still stuck with bloody two-sticker apples?

In other news, the company I work for is edging closer and closer to Dilbertland.

Last month, we got a memo that going forward the computers would be merging two file statuses (let's call them status A and status B). Now, there's some logic to this, though I would argue that the logic of identifying them as different was much stronger... but fine.

Then last week, we got a memo that the systems would be automatically updating all files of status A in a specified manner. Well that's great for your A files... except if they were what we used to mark as status B, this brilliant new update is going to cause errors.

You have to love how two groups of people are working on stuff relating to these files, trying to make everything more efficient with (apparently) no communication whatsoever between them.

I've got to start reviewing Wally's productivity tips again...

AGC #419, because there's nothing more exciting than a guy writing responding to email for four frames. Everything sounds like a good idea until I try to write this post...

BTW, I just rediscovered a great resource if you're ever minmaxxing D&D 3.5 characters: a big fat list of feats under the open-license. Most feats appear in multiple tables in the document so that the index can be as useful as possible, for example, you might find a feat both listed by its function, under a specific class AND under another feat or a skill that is a requirement. Trust me, it's handy (though just because a feat exists in some Dragon magazine you've never seen doesn't mean your GM will allow it... for example, Easy Metamagic is just way waaaaaay too 'easy').

Here's AGC #418, because everybody was asking for more Dr. Stan. Actually, I don't think anybody was. But I'm pretty random, so that's what you get.

Let's see, what's been going on around here lately...

Fruit fly cloaking devices... Yes, the fruit flies are back. They fly very slowly, but being extremely tiny and black, once you try to 'clap' them, they disappear without a trace. But you know that you didn't get them... you know...

Credit Card paranoia I found my previous (expired) credit card that I should have destroyed months ago when the new one arrived. Am I the only one here who (once I get around to it) spends 15 minutes trying to destroy it as though the team from CSI is waiting out by the dumpster to try and steal my credit card number? Cutting each letter and number separately and spreading the fragments of them and the magnetic strip and spreading them between multiple garbage bags as well as leaving a few key pieces to be picked up by the vacuum cleaner. That last bit was a totally intentional bit of subterfuge if I do say so myself.

Still enjoying the same entertainment stuff... ...until we run out. Boston Legal and Season Two of the PVP/Penny Arcade D&D podcasts (with guest star Wil Wheaton) are still kicking ass.

And DDO's free version looks like it's going to launch on Sept 9th. The question: would I be better off waiting a couple days to start while the newbie areas are crammed full of lag-bots (aka other players). Meanwhile, I have been working on my free accounts on Ederon.com online TCG (no relation to D&D's Eberron setting). I have one account up to level 6 and two at level 7 and I can occasionally pull off a win against some of the higher level players. Which is good, because I seem to spend 100% of my game time playing either level 1-2 ppl who just started, or level 10+ rare-heavy paid accounts with brutal combos and/or non-interactive decks.

Today's comic, AGC #416 I can't take much credit for.


It was right after comic #399 that I got a message from one very astute reader who not only projected who I was planning to make the next GM, but also evoked the image of this comic's parody movie scene. The image was sufficiently compelling (to me, anyhow) that I couldn't resist :)

I just found out the other day from quill18, but I thought I'd repeat it here because I'm sure some of my comic readers will be interested to know that...

Later this summer, D&D Online is going to be adding a free version of their service. It sounds like free accounts have the same level cap as paid accounts and access to a lot of the content. It seems like you have access to most of the races and classes, but would have to pay a bit to 'unlock' Warforged, Monks, and perhaps some others.

All in all though, www.ddo.com was pretty fun when I tried the open beta, and when it goes free, I'm definitely going to want to at least try it out.

Slightly overdue, but here's Here's AGC #414. If you've read "season 1" of my Real D&D Excerpts you know that players will go waaaaaaay farther than this if they get an idea into their heads on what to do...

Anyway, I blame the late on working 7+13+9 hours between 2pm Friday and 6:30pm Sunday. There was not a whole lot of time to write stuff, especially with hour-plus internet tech support issues coming up while I was home.

Gotta go...

There are webcomics, and then there are webcomics.

The sad thing is that I get 2x to 5x as many hits as normal whenever somebody links an AGC in the Order of the Stick forums.

Sure, 95% of people who follow the link will take a look at one of my ugly texty comics out of context and immediately hit their back button...

Still good for my (generally trivial) ad revenue though.

Voila! AGC #406 is up and running. I do like when I get into the action...

I decided to throw a few slogans at www.typetees.com, to see if anything would stick. It's a site where you give them a line to put on a t-shirt in 65 characters or less, you vote people's ideas up and down, and ones that rate really well have a chance to be hand-picked, designed and printed, with the originator of the idea winning $400. Bearing in mind the tone of the site, and trying to save my best ideas for elsewhere (I know someone who can potentially make more than that, and make SOME money a hell of a lot more reliably, from a really good idea)... this is what I came up with for them.

Brilliant? No. A quick laugh? One can only hope...

Very very busy lately. Not only am I working more days than I'm used to each week, but medical appointments have been piling and piling up, filling in most of the time before my late shifts and after my early shifts until there's nothing left. So I don't think there's much chance of pushing out the next AGC for today...

In the hopes of appeasing anyone who hasn't heard these yet, or who just really liked my D&D excerpts, there are some great podcasts I found on the Wizards on the Coast website. These are from a 4th edition pre-release gaming session where the players are the guys from the PvP and Penny Arcade webcomics, with a game Dev as GM, showing off the new version in a premade adventure which may be familiar to anyone who played the first 4th-Edition module.

So if you're interested (and have a few hours to devote your speakers or headsets to audio-awesome while you work or play), and you don't mind some spoilers for Keep on the Shadowfell, check out PvP/Penny Arcade Podcast Episode 1.

If that gets you hooked, the archives are here, and you can work through all of them. I'm only up to number 3 or 4, but it's pretty sweet :)

Oh, and did I mention that for the second series, they were joined by Wil Wheaton?

There we go, AGC 398. I also went back and added more of those little author's notes under the recent comics, though I hesitate to mention them because they aren't really that interesting.

List of Projects I have recently embarked on, considered re-opening, or at least concieved and tried to plan:

• Novel set in the Star Wars universe (set in the time of Episode V) but using original characters. About 58000 words so far.
• Novel set in a custom high fantasy setting (orcs, trolls and lots and lots of magic). About 53000 words in the current draft.
• Script for comic/manga or animated cartoon in a custom scifi setting (interstellar travel is common and fast but expensive). Got stuck around the fifth episode... I mean, I have the whole series plotted out in framework, but Episode 5 isn't working the way it's supposed to.
• Script for comic/manga or animated cartoon in a custom steampunk/alchemy setting (superpowered gunfighters on combat drugs, clockwork automatons and steampowered everything). No actual script written yet, but I've been working on the framework and key scenes, and the 'project' has been very much on my mind for weeks and weeks.
• A 4.0 D&D adventure (I've planned a lot in my head, but only written out the beginning and setting/description). I have about a month if I want to get it done in time to be useful (though the story ideas will undoubtedly show up in AGC eventually, minus the 4.0 stuff).
• A print-on-demand merchandise shop on Cafepress. I have about 45 designs in there so far, I still want to fill out a couple of my categories a bit more, but I'm about ready to start advertising.
• An actionscript 2.0 Flash game which is a top-down view arena-style shooter. I think it's theme would have some appeal, and the controls are a little unusual (and hopefully fun). This one has sort of fallen by the wayside though.
• And of course I'm still putting out an AGC strip every six-or-seven days. And, you know, working. And in a committed relationship. You can see how some of the other stuff doesn't get done... the problem is I'm at a high risk of starting something else and letting one of the above drop out of the rotation, instead of getting something done.

The next comic, AGC #369, is up with another kind of trap that you just don't see every day. Not even close to on par with the infamous 'illusory air', but that's probably a good thing.

A little late in the day. but AGC #366 is up. Enjoy.

CNN's making a big deal of New York mayor Bloomberg's proposal to put up big wind farms in the outlying parts of the city. I think it's a good idea, I think that most people who oppose wind power are way out of line... but they usually win out in the US, so I don't expect this proposal to go anywhere.

Wind power produces electricity without expending any fuel, makes manufacturing jobs (probably local ones, considering the large size of some components and the increasing expense of shipping), as well as maintenance jobs... it's distributed, making it less vulnerable to attack than old style large power plants. It's just all-around superior. Some people think it's ugly... OOOOOOH, freaking UGLY. Get a grip. As for killing birds, there's no way it kills as much wildlife as fossil fuels do.